CAMERON A. AVERY

“A prophetic aesthetic calls us to talk about what it means to raise generations of architects with a multicultural sensibility who will think about architecture not just as a profession but who will think about spaces that everyday people inhabit and about our accountability toward making those spaces wonderful and inhabitable space.” — bell hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics —

Center for Listening Ethics
BUILDING

OVERVIEW

M.Arch.
spring 2024
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The Library for Banned Books and the accompanying Center for Listening Ethics attempt to explore spatial design that evokes and encourages the practice of listening. Inspired by the artistic explorations of the Bureau of Listening based in Denmark and their narrative prompt of a “Center for Listening Ethics”, this design aims to create space for “slow-thinking and caring space,” encouraging the thought: in what ways can we listen?

The banned-books library sits on the top floors of the project, ensuring security against those who pursue its erasure. A coordinated path through galleries and public event spaces on the lower floors gives visitors opportunities to listen and/or learn listening practices as they move closer to stories that need to be heard.

The model below represented not only the design's formal gesture, but also the project's phenomenological concept. This listening object became a “recording device” that transcribed a conversation between my spouse and me.

CAMERON A. AVERY